IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
NOTICES OF THE LAND ROUTE TO CATHAY, ETC. 305
The following are sold by the hundredweight of 100 Genoese pounds (details omitted) .
Round pepper; ginger; barked brazil-wood; lac; zedoary;l incense ; sugar, and powdered sugar of all kinds ; aloes of all kinds ; quicksilver ; cassia fistula ; sal ammoniac or l isciaclro ; cinnabar ; cinnamon ; galbanum ;2 ladanum of Cyprus ; mastic; copper ; amber, big, middling, and small, not wrought ; stript coral ; clean and fine coral, middling and small.
The following are sold by the pound.
Raw silk ; saffron ; clove-stalks3 and cloves ; cubebs ; lign-aloes ; rhubarb ; mace ; long pepper ; galangal ;4 broken camphor ; nutmegs ; spike ;5 cardamoms ; scammony ; pounding pearls ;6 manna ; borax ; gum Arabic ; dragon's
Zettoara. This is a drug now almost disused ; the root of a plant which used to be exported from Malabar, Ceylon, Cochin China, etc. (Macculloch.)
2 A gum-resin derived from a perennial plant (G. officinale) growing in Syria, Persia, the Cape of Good Hope, etc. It is imported into England from the Levant chiefly. (Macculloch.)
3 Fusti di Gherofani. These, when good, are said elsewhere by Pegolotti to be worth one-third the price of good cloves. The phrase appears often in Uzzano's book, as well as Fiori and Foglia di Gherofani. Garzia, quoted by Mattioli on Dioscorides, says the stalks of the cloves are called Fusti. But old Gerarde says That grosse kinde of cloves which hath been supposed to be the male, are nothing else than fruit of the same tree tarrying there until it fall down of itselfe unto the grounde, where by reason of his long lying and meeting with some raine in the mean season, it loseth the quick taste that the others have. Some have called those Fusti, whereof we may English them Fusses." Pegolotti has also (p. 309) Fistuchi di Gherofani, but these seem to have been clove twigs, which were formerly imported along with cloves, and which Budaeus in a note on Theophrastus considers to have been the cinnamomum of the ancients. (See a passage in Ibn Batuta, infra; Gerarde's Herball, 1535; Mattioli, 354; Budaeus on Theophrastus, 992-3).
4 Galanga, a root imported from India and China, of aromatic smell and hot unpleasant taste. (Macculloch.)
Spigo ; the spike lavender from which this was made was called Italian Nard. Marsden supposes the spigo of M. Polo to be spikenard.
6 Perle da Pestare, mentioned also by G. da Uzzano ; I suppose for use in medicine. Mattioli quotes from Avicenna and others that pearls were
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